The Story of Us: Older and Younger Couples’ Language and Emotional Responses to Jointly Told Relationship Narratives

Social-emotional well-being is said to improve with age, but evidence for age differences in couples’ behavior and emotions—studied primarily during marital conflict—has been mixed. Characteristics of jointly told relationship stories predict marital quality among newlyweds and long-married couples...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wilson, Stephanie, Malarkey, William, Kiecolt-Glaser, Janice
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7740831/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1854
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author Wilson, Stephanie
Malarkey, William
Kiecolt-Glaser, Janice
author_facet Wilson, Stephanie
Malarkey, William
Kiecolt-Glaser, Janice
author_sort Wilson, Stephanie
collection PubMed
description Social-emotional well-being is said to improve with age, but evidence for age differences in couples’ behavior and emotions—studied primarily during marital conflict—has been mixed. Characteristics of jointly told relationship stories predict marital quality among newlyweds and long-married couples alike, yet younger and older couples’ accounts have never been compared. To examine age differences in couples’ emotional responses and in their I/we-talk, emotion word use, and immediacy (i.e., self-focused, present-tense style), 42 married couples ages 22–77 recounted their relationship’s history then rated the discussion and their moods. Compared to younger couples, older couples used more we than I language, more positive than negative words, and less immediacy. Partners in older pairs shared more similar language patterns. In turn, lower immediacy mediated links between older age and less negative mood, and explained husbands’ more positive appraisals. Indeed, relationship accounts reveal novel insights into age differences in marriage and well-being.
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spelling pubmed-77408312020-12-21 The Story of Us: Older and Younger Couples’ Language and Emotional Responses to Jointly Told Relationship Narratives Wilson, Stephanie Malarkey, William Kiecolt-Glaser, Janice Innov Aging Abstracts Social-emotional well-being is said to improve with age, but evidence for age differences in couples’ behavior and emotions—studied primarily during marital conflict—has been mixed. Characteristics of jointly told relationship stories predict marital quality among newlyweds and long-married couples alike, yet younger and older couples’ accounts have never been compared. To examine age differences in couples’ emotional responses and in their I/we-talk, emotion word use, and immediacy (i.e., self-focused, present-tense style), 42 married couples ages 22–77 recounted their relationship’s history then rated the discussion and their moods. Compared to younger couples, older couples used more we than I language, more positive than negative words, and less immediacy. Partners in older pairs shared more similar language patterns. In turn, lower immediacy mediated links between older age and less negative mood, and explained husbands’ more positive appraisals. Indeed, relationship accounts reveal novel insights into age differences in marriage and well-being. Oxford University Press 2020-12-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7740831/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1854 Text en © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Abstracts
Wilson, Stephanie
Malarkey, William
Kiecolt-Glaser, Janice
The Story of Us: Older and Younger Couples’ Language and Emotional Responses to Jointly Told Relationship Narratives
title The Story of Us: Older and Younger Couples’ Language and Emotional Responses to Jointly Told Relationship Narratives
title_full The Story of Us: Older and Younger Couples’ Language and Emotional Responses to Jointly Told Relationship Narratives
title_fullStr The Story of Us: Older and Younger Couples’ Language and Emotional Responses to Jointly Told Relationship Narratives
title_full_unstemmed The Story of Us: Older and Younger Couples’ Language and Emotional Responses to Jointly Told Relationship Narratives
title_short The Story of Us: Older and Younger Couples’ Language and Emotional Responses to Jointly Told Relationship Narratives
title_sort story of us: older and younger couples’ language and emotional responses to jointly told relationship narratives
topic Abstracts
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7740831/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1854
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